Love-Struck at an Early Age

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By Vincent M. Mallozzi

July 13, 2014

Christine Ellen Roemer and Timothy McAlpine Bacon were married Saturday evening at the Riverhouse at the Rumson Country Club in Rumson, N.J. The Rev. Peter L. Amerman, a Presbyterian minister, officiated.

The bride, 26, works in New York as an associate at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, where she helps corporations buy company stock. She graduated from Bates College in Maine. She is the daughter of Cathryn Roemer and Frederick J. Roemer of Rumson.

The groom, also 26, works in New York as an associate at Deutsche Bank, helping insurance companies manage their interest-rate strategies. He graduated summa cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania. He is the son of Elizabeth M. Bacon and Selden D. Bacon Jr. of Blairstown, N.J.

The couple met in September 2002 at Blair Academy, an independent boarding school in Blairstown. They dated very briefly in freshman year.

“We were just 14, but we had very different political views when we first met,” Ms. Roemer said. “I leaned toward being a Republican and he was a Democrat, and he always challenged me, but he always made me laugh.”

Adding to their differences, Mr. Bacon was a day student and Ms. Roemer lived on campus.

“I was on campus all the time, and he wasn’t always around,” she said, “which is why we didn’t stay together very long.”

They stayed in touch as friends, but by their sophomore year he wanted more. In April 2004, he asked her to go golfing on the campus course. She was unaware that he planned to use the occasion to ask her out again.

“We got along really well, and she was a very interesting person who was a lot of fun to be around,” Mr. Bacon said. “She’s a hard person to get to know, but once you do, you realize it was worth the effort.”

On the sixth hole, all was going well and Mr. Bacon was poised to put his plan into action once Ms. Roemer, who was a member of the school’s golf team, finished giving him a few pointers on his swing.

While providing instruction, she stepped too close to his backswing and was struck in the head with his club.

“I was terrified and freaking out at first because there was a ton of blood everywhere,” Mr. Bacon said.

A trip to the emergency room and two staples were needed to close the wound. “A week or two later, when it was clear that she was O.K., we both saw the humor in it,” he said.

Despite heading off to colleges in different states, they managed to maintain a long-distance relationship.

“At first, neither of us expected to stay together because no high school couple that we had known were able to maintain their relationship once they went off to college,” she said. “But in the end, no one knew me better than Tim, who was my best friend, and no one I had met was able to measure up to him.”